From the very genesis of active policymaking in healthcare settings, the process has been facing a variety of severe challenges in the way towards successful implementation. The major issue, however, concerns the fact that central decision-makers in terms of the existing policies have nothing to do with healthcare, being rather related to the aspect of legislation and organizational peculiarities. As a result, most of the actual outcomes are not as beneficial as they should be in order to produce visible results (Adam et al., 2018). Hence, the modern patterns of healthcare management require nurses’ intervention, as they are the ones who obtain considerable amount of primary data required to assess policies’ structure.
Nowadays, nurses’ participation in the policymaking process might be divided into two major groups of opportunities: explicit intervention and implicit influence on the process. While the latter option is a safer one in terms of job security and workload, it is the former one that brings tangible results to the system. Thus, the first opportunity for RNs and APRNs in terms of the policy review is to participate in public health endeavors such as the Sigma Nursing Association, which contributes to the development of major community health policies among nurses (“Sigma organizational fact sheet,” n.d.). In terms of the membership, nurses have the opportunity to obtain proper education on the existing policymaking regularities and establish patterns of strategic nursing management.
Another way is to take an active part through direct collaboration with policymakers, providing them with ready-made ideas and fact sheets that might potentially affect the process (Burke, 2016). While being relatively different, both these opportunities contain a specific challenge for the nurses – public ignorance of healthcare policies and nurses’ inability to convey relevant information with desired outcomes. The only way to overcome this issue in both situations is to engage with the public in order to raise awareness to such an extent that policymakers would no longer be able to ignore the matter. Some of the most beneficial strategies for these interventions included individual-based strategy of mentoring and group-based strategy of control (Wichaikhum et al., 2020). Thus, taking everything into consideration, it might be concluded that nurses’ participation in policymaking, while being performed in a variety of forms and approaches, remain a primary resource of change implementation in the healthcare field.
References
Adam, C., Steinebach, Y., & Knill, C. (2018). Neglected challenges to evidence-based policymaking: the problem of policy accumulation. Policy Sciences, 51(3), 269-290.
Burke, S. A. (2016). Influence through policy: nurses have a unique role. Web.
Sigma organizational fact sheet. (n.d.). Web.
Wichaikhum, O., Abhicharttibutra, K., Nantsupawat, A., Kowitlawakul, Y., & Kunaviktikul, W. (2020). Developing a strategic model of participation in policy development for nurses. International Nursing Review, 67(1), 11-18.